As much I love radio, and as much I’d love to buy the one receiver that fulfills all demands I may have ever had – considering that – no matter if I use a low-cost SDR or a cheap portable or this thing – these issues…

– an ever decreasing number of AM stations

– an ever decreasing number of SW BC stations, reducing my choice of daily (English) programming to CRI, RRI, CRI, VOG, CRI, RHC, CRI and (OK, they are great) RNZI, and sometimes even CRI and a lot of Brother Stairs

– hams fighting, arguing, bitching and shouting on top of each other, otherwise…

– hams making meaningless “you’re fivenine, 73!” QSOs, only topped by yet another contest on every goddamn weekend

– hams whacking actually interesting DX stations by shouting their callsign 300 times per minute, while the DX station is talking

– the solar minimum (besides whacko local regulations) makes it unlikely that much joy will come out of 6 and 4m

– police, fire fighter and other utility radio has moved to encrypted TETRA trunked systems

– FM stations are not much to listen to anymore, all having the same old sh..ongs in rotation, or the same old 4-hour news feature loops

– the interesting things beyond 70cm being covered very well even by $10 DVB-T sticks

…and all that jazz, make such a decision very, very hard, on top of the fact that no receiver can mitigate the limits created by a QTH not being of the ITU “quiet rural/remote” category, while this thing will probably not bring you more distant stations than much cheaper SDRs, even on “quiet rural” listening spots, makes shelling out 3000€ for such a radio sound like a rather stupid thing to do.

Still, I want one. 🙂 But for that kind of money, it oughtta be one of the best, most stunning radios ever made, no glitches, no cheap parts, no shortcomings, no monkey business. Waiting for the reviews…

I agree 100% with everything you said.
My Drake R8, Grundig Sat 800 and SDRplay RSP1 is all I need to listen to anything I want. I have been a Shortwave listener since 1984. I would love to have this receiver, but it’s just a WANT thing and not a NEED thing. It probably wouldn’t do any better than my Drake, Sat 800 and SDR in the long run as far as what I listen to.
My home is outside of a rural town on 30 acres. My antenna is the Alpha Delta DX-Ultra. It’s pretty quiet in my location. My radios perform well. That’s a lot of money as well for a radio.

In my experience Mike, touch screens have opposite polarity to the recycling centre, and start their service lives migrating towards it. While a quality touch pad has to be beaten, abused, and dragged there.

Forgive my rookie status, but I don’t see any standard computer monitor output on the R8600? Even the legendary ICOM R9500 still has an ancient (circa 1987) VGA connector? I haven’t used a VGA output on a computer – monitor connection in well over a decade. Is there some reason why modern DisplayPort or HDMI output isn’t used in deca-kilo dollar recievers ?

It will have a keypad on the touchscreen…. exactly as your iphone has!
The old times of phisical keys are gone. Nowadays everything has touchscreen keys: your mobile phone, your iPad, your laptop, and so on. Much more userfriendly and efficient (that’s why you don´t find hard keys in any mobile phone anymore).

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